


Heads Will Roll

by Love_andbalance



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Battle Typical Violence, Bittersweet Ending, Blood Kink, Blood Magick, Bodily Fluids are Everywhere, Bullying, Dark Ending, Descriptions of Social Problems, Disturbing Sexual Imagery- Consenual but Creepy, Exhibitionism, F/M, Family Drama, Frightening Imagery, Haunting, Hedonistic Sexual Practices, It's Halloween Y'all, Main Character Suicide, Main Character Suicide- Seriously, No Pregnancy, Oral Sex, Revenge, Rough Sex, Sex Magick, Sleepy Hollow AU, Social Outcast, Together forever, War, deaths of major characters, headless horseman - Freeform, spooky imagery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:20:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26820538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Love_andbalance/pseuds/Love_andbalance
Summary: Rey Palpatine has spent years being tormented by her grandfather and the villagers of Sleepy Hollow. When things in the village take a dangerous turn that threatens her life, she takes up the power she has long denied and summons the legendary Headless Horseman to help her take her revenge on them all.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 59
Kudos: 141





	1. Bones Above, Bones Below

**Author's Note:**

> This will just be a short little spooky fic for my favorite holiday! It should be one chapter on each Sunday leading up to Halloween!

Legend laid heavy on the small village of Sleepy Hollow.

The farmers and countryfolk of the county would go miles out of their way to go around the town, looking over their shoulders as they repeated their tales of how the villagers had been cursed for their cruelty and how this had led to nearly a century of suspicious deaths and questionable disappearances.

Generations of such whispers had spoken of a vengeful spirit that roamed the roads, a specter on a black horse that rode out of the mist to soak the ground with blood and disappear as quickly as he’d come.

Death was exactly what Rey hoped to find as she crept along the side of the road out of the village just past sundown. She was nearly a specter herself now, the black fabric of her skirt and the hood she had drawn over her face helping her to blend into the darkness that had settled over the seldom traveled road.

She kept close watch over her own shoulder, but she was looking for curious neighbors, not ghostly apparitions. It wasn’t time for _his_ arrival, not yet, but she had seen the cruelty of the villagers for herself and was taking no chances. 

She had hadn’t bothered with a lantern, the full harvest moon hung heavy in the sky above her, and that left her hands free to carry the basket with the other supplies that she’d need- a blanket, a knife, candles made of animal fat and bearing inscriptions that she’d carved herself, a jar of old chicken bones, and a heavy book with the pages that curled at the edges from age and heavy use.

She reached her hand in, running her finger over the cover to reassure herself that the stolen book with its dark secrets was still there. She had taken what did not belong to her, and there was no turning back now.

They were all going to pay for what they’d done.

Every wagging tongue, every hateful and ungrateful eye, right up to her grandfather himself. Sheev Palpatine was power hungry, selfish, and cruel. He ruled over their tiny existence with an iron fist that had choked the joy out of every single one of them, herself included, and she wouldn’t spare him just because he shared her blood.

If anything, she was looking forward to his punishment the most.

Rey had been only five when she came to live with him, when her parents abandoned her and never looked back. She had been devastated and terrified to find that far from taking pity on her, the villagers had used her as a target for their anger toward her grandfather. She had been tripped, kicked, and spit on from the moment she arrived and those that didn’t actively participate in her abuse laughed at those who did.

Once she had turned away from the dark path he had offered her, sick and trembling at the dark magic that he used to keep himself alive and in power, Palpatine had laughed with them, mocking her for the gentle heart that would not allow her to defend herself against their brutality.

She’d foolishly run to him when she was ten and a group of older boys had held her by the arms and taken turns throwing rocks at her until they split her forehead open, sending blood pouring over her face so hot and thick that she’d feared she was dying, but all she had received for her trouble was a quick and savage slap.

Sheev tolerated no weakness and had no capacity for empathy. If she was too soft to take the strength that was her blood right, then, as far as he was concerned, she deserved the abuse they heaped upon her.

She’d sewn up the wound herself with trembling hands and a sewing needle, following a guide she’d found in a musty old book on medicine in her grandfather’s library. She could have reached for magic then, but she was determined not to become as heartless as her abusers.

Her mercy meant that there had been few safe places for her in those early years and she’d hidden herself in the library. She’d skipped the books about magic out of sheer stubbornness and principle, but she’d spent hours every day reading books about herbs and healing, anatomy, and surgery.

Eventually, the villagers had come to depend on her knowledge when they needed a tea to bring down a fever or an expert hand to set a broken bone and they stopped throwing stones. Rey thought that she had found the foundations of peaceful life- if an admittedly lonely one- until Palpatine arranged for Snoke to take over as the new village minister.

He had singled her out immediately, branded her as a danger and a witch as he screamed from his pulpit with fire and hatred in his eyes. The village that had used her for her healing, whose children she had nursed through illnesses and injuries, turned on her with astonishing viciousness, all too willing to believe the worst of her.

She knew better this time than to turn to Palpatine for salvation, certain that he’d let them tear her apart at his doorstep without lifting a finger to protect her. This was his punishment for her failure- to be destroyed for being the very thing that she had refused to become, by the people that she refused to harm no matter how much they had hurt her.

She had tried to ignore the shifting attitudes, the whispers and the glares, but their grumblings had only increased as the days passed and Snoke’s sermons became more hateful. He was calling for her blood and she knew her time was running short. Her mind had room for nothing but the need for survival now, but her heart had finally bloomed with the need for revenge.

Palpatine’s library and his long concealed dark secrets had held the key to both, if she was willing to do what needed to be done, to embrace the practices that she had shunned and take up the power that had always repulsed her.

She shuddered in revulsion under the dim light of the moon at the thought but straightened her spine in determination. There was a price for safety, for vengeance, but it was one she was finally willing to pay.

Once she had rounded the curve in the road and passed out of sight of the village, she stepped into the woods, the dark leafless branches creaking in welcome as she passed the trunks of trees that were older than the village itself.

No one wandered into this forest, but they all knew the secret that the trees concealed- a mass grave that had long been ignored, holding the bodies of soldiers that had died in service of the wrong side in a long ago war. Unnamed and unwanted, their grave had been left to rot, untended as the forest crept over the uninscribed marker that was the only indication of their final resting place.

She stumbled over the stone, gone green with moss and neglect but cut too square to be natural, in the middle of a small clearing. There was no sign that anyone ever visited this place and it was unsettling to know that she stood over the jumbled bodies of the dead that had never been mourned.

Rumor said that one of the unfortunate ones had been a son of the village itself, slain by the hand of a loved one and rolled by that same hand into this faceless grave. His family had never spoken his name again, and in his rage, he had come for them after death, become the vision of terror that the whole village feared as he hunted those who had hurt him one by one into extinction.

It was this man that she searched for now, that she would bind to her will in much the same way that her grandfather had done before he had lost control, before he had become afraid.

She pulled her supplies from the basket with steady hands, spreading her blanket over the stone like an altar and placing the book in the center. She opened its pages- flipping past the spells for wealth and youth and power that her grandfather had used so many times that the ink had begun to fade- and to the spell that she was looking for.

A spell to raise the souls of the dead.

She arranged her candles on the ground carefully, lighting them as she went and stopping often to check the diagram in the book. The symbols carved into the sides began to glow red in the darkness when the last candle had been set in place and the last anxious part of her mind that had wondered if this would even work at all fell silent.

She shouldn’t have doubted her power- she was Palpatine’s granddaughter, after all. Even if she had never wanted it, the darkness came as naturally to her as breathing.

She wondered if it would surprise him when death came for him bearing her name. It shouldn’t, but she had a strong feeling that it would, and she hoped she got to see it written all over his face.

The stars gleamed in the sky above her as she knelt before the altar in the circle she had made and scattered the chicken bones from the jar on the ground over the grave.

A symbol of death on the surface, an echo of the bones below.

The knife’s blade flashed in the moonlight as she held it to her arm, the sharp edge parting her skin with an ease that surprised her, freeing the blood in her veins to run like black water onto the white surface of the bones. She whimpered at the pain, steeling herself as she pressed the knife in deeper.

Blood magic required pain and it required sacrifice.

The dead did not answer to weakness, they did not answer to fear.

She carved the skin from her wrist to her elbow- blood pouring out of her hot and sticky to stain the ground and soak into the soil.

When she was satisfied that the offering was sufficient, she set the knife on the altar beside the book and began to read.

“Mirtis kash zo tash…”

_Death is a lie…_

“Pro xela nu gauti ty...”

_Through pain I gain strength…_

“Pro kraujas nu aukoti tu natura…”

_Through blood I give you life…_

“Nuyak adata valia visita tu kia nun…”

_My magic will call you to me…_

“Mirtis kash zo tash…”

_Death is a lie_

The air around her stilled, tense with anticipation and alive with power.

“Come to me, Kylo Ren,” she said, putting a name to the nameless and forgotten as the wind began to whip around her and an unnatural fog crept across the ground.

The steady thud of hoofbeats between the trees sent her scrambling backward, her confidence forgotten as a shadow darker than the night materialized in front of her and took on the shape of a horse and a rider.

She expected him to be frightening, but she was unprepared to actually see nothing but a bloody torso that ended in a shredded stump of a neck. The man that threw himself from the back of a wild-eyed black horse looked very much less than human.

His pants and boots were black, but he wore a red coat that tugged at his shoulders, stretched tight over a broad back and thick arms and she realized he must have been a British loyalist in a family of rebel colonials.

He waited, each movement of his unnatural body making her stomach roll, as the horse pawed the ground behind him. The animal was nearly as terrifying as the man, with eyes glowed as red as his jacket.

“Quiet, Grimtaash” a deep voice urged, emerging from nowhere as one hand lifted to pat the horse’s neck soothingly. “I’m sure he’s here somewhere.”

She watched from her hiding place as he stalked the clearing, looking for something or someone and getting more frustrated as the seconds ticked by.

“Come out, Palpatine, you bloody coward,” the voice finally called, “I know you must be there somewhere, you son of a mongrel bitch!”

She shrunk down further as his body swiveled, watching in terror as he apparently scanned the area, looking for her grandfather. She knew the moment he spotted her crouching behind the gravestone because he stiffened in surprise and took a half step toward her as she scrambled to her feet and grabbed the knife off the altar.

He hesitated as she stared at him, her gaze frozen on the bloody stump of his neck, and then he walked toward her, long legs covering the space between them in only a few quick steps.

“You’re not Palpatine,” the voice observed, leaning forward in the darkness to try and get a good look at her face beneath her hood. She shrank away from him, unable to bear being so close to the horrifyingly ragged edge of flesh that began only a few inches above his shoulders. Even without a head the body was taller than she was, and his presence was overwhelming.

The air around them smelled of death and the sweet tang of blood.

She tucked the knife into her skirt, hidden from his view with her grip tight on the handle. “I am a Palpatine,” she said firmly. “He’s my grandfather. And _you_ are the headless horseman of Sleepy Hollow.”

There was a contemplative silence as they each considered the other.

“I could kill you right here,” he said finally, raising a hand to touch her as she stepped back quickly, remaining just out of reach.

“You won’t,” she insisted, but she gripped the knife tighter just the same. “My blood brought you here, you are bound to me. _I_ _summoned you_.”

“A fair point,” he conceded, “but one that only matters if your will is stronger than my own. It wasn’t working so well for the last Palpatine.”

“I’m stronger than the last Palpatine,” she said boldly, refusing to step back as he once again closed the distance between them.

“You might be stronger than he was, but I will answer to no one. I took my vengeance and I don’t need to reap any more souls for the kingdom of hell.”

“What about my vengeance? I won’t try to force you, but I ask you for your help.” She let her voice quiver, putting all of her limited feminine wiles into the plea.

He stopped in front of her, his chest nearly touching her own as she stared up into the empty space where his head should be, and her legs quaked with fear.

“What could you possibly need for vengeance?” he asked quietly and set her blood to boil.

She reached up with a trembling hand and pulled back the corner of her hood, revealing the mangled portion of her face to the moonlight. Her childhood sewing skills had done nothing more than clumsily draw the ragged edges of her wound together for healing and the line the rock had drawn on her face was now a crooked and raised scar that dipped from her forehead to cross her cheek while narrowly missing her eye.

“I have more than enough need,” she told him, hard and unflinching beneath his invisible gaze. 


	2. Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay. This was supposed to have been posted on Sunday but exams threw off my writing schedule.
> 
> We are going all in for the creepy imagery, violence, and monster smut so if that is something that makes you uncomfortable I would advise against reading this chapter. Happy spooky month!!

The first three heads he brought her had faces from her nightmares. The boys who had terrorized her, who had tortured her and scarred her as a child. The horseman had been immovable on the subject, and not even the bond of her magic could sway him to going after Snoke or her grandfather first after she had tucked her face safely away beneath the hood again.

The shadows had kept him from seeing anything more than her scar, but it been enough.

Now she stood at the altar, staring down at the evidence of his violence with an undeniable satisfaction as she took in their horrified expressions.

She didn’t ask how he found them or why he had brought her back their heads, swinging gently as they hung from the saddle until he had cut them free and tossed them triumphantly at her feet.

“Were they frightened?” she asked, her voice barely carrying over the whisper of the breeze to the horseman as he waited beside his large black horse. She could feel the weight of his gaze, his anticipation of her reaction.

“I made them beg for their lives before I killed them” he told her gruffly and she could hear the gratification in his voice, even if she could not see it in his eyes. It was still disconcerting, the way his body moved and spoke with nothing but a bleeding stump for a neck, but most of her fear of him had faded.

He was not interested in harming her and in the short time had been gone he had done a thorough job of handling those who had.

“I am glad,” she told him honestly, her heart cold with the memory of the way that she had begged for them not to hurt her as they laughed. Her blood and tears had been a game for them, and she had no pity for their fear.

“What now?” he asked, and she frowned, deliberating their options. Not everyone in the village needed to die- destroying the most powerful of them would leave the rest to live in terror as she had done.

“Snoke,” she decided. “He would have had me hung as a witch if he had gotten his way.”

“Are you not a witch?”

“Perhaps now,” she admitted, “but not always. I was a healer. I had rejected the path my grandfather laid before me and I was gentle and helpful to the townspeople despite their treatment of me. Then my grandfather brought in Snoke and they turned against me.”

“Where do I find him?”

“The church,” she said with a sneer. “He calls himself a man of God.”

“Corruption can turn the heart of any man,” he said simply. “It seems some things have not changed in a century.”

“Is that what happened to you?” He had been painted as a villain in the legends the villagers told, but despite the pile of heads he had gathered for her, she wondered if that was the truth.

He paused, the questing hanging unanswered between them, and she wished that she could see his face, determine what his reaction had been to her words. He shifted, like he was trying to get a better look at her face beneath her hood and she was reminded that her own reactions were hidden away.

“I fought for the king and my family fought for the colonies,” he said carefully. “I considered them traitors and they considered me an embarrassment and a threat to their ideals.”

“Is it true then, that it was your uncle…”

“Yes,” he said, and his fist clenched at his side. “Another man of God with nothing but anger in his heart.”

“They did not even bury you properly.” She murmured the words, almost more to herself than him. The pain of that denial was one that she could easily imagine.

“I did not align myself with their cause and they valued my obedience more than they valued my life.” Bitterness dripped venomous from each word, but he did not seem angry at her as she had feared he might be. “As for which of us was corrupt,” he finished, “I cannot say.”

“You are not what I expected,” she admitted. “The stories I was told made you seem like a devil, an evil spirit.”

“Hmm,” he said, turning away from her without further comment and placing a boot in his stirrup. He swung into the saddle in one smooth rapid motion, his horse prancing sideways beneath him, clearly eager to be off.

She stepped back to make room as he passed and tipped her head up in surprise when he stopped and held out a hand.

“You should go with me,” he said as an explanation when she peered in the vicinity of where his head should have been. “You deserve to see for yourself that this man can’t hurt you anymore.”

The horse stamped its foot impatiently as she looked at the small space in front of Kylo on the saddle. She would be pressed against him, his bloody neck mere inches from her own, but he was offering her the chance to see Snoke’s death for herself…

She pulled her hood closely around her face and took his hand, gasping as he pulled her up until she was seated tensely in front of him, his arms bracketing her to keep her from falling as he set his heels to the horse’s flank and put the clearing behind them.

The short ride to the village was silent, her body stiff to keep from pressing back against him any more than necessary as they rode. She had expected him to smell like death and rot, but the scent that surrounded him was not as unpleasant as she had imagined- leather and horse sweat and the blood that clung to his hands as he guided the horse up the road toward the village.

“Won’t they see us coming?” she asked in a whisper as they approached the town. “Snoke will have all of the villagers stepping out to defend him if we are seen and then it’s my neck in a hangman’s noose.”

“No one will harm you,” he answered firmly. “And they will not see us coming.” Commanded by some dark force, fog rolled in to surround them as they entered the village and rode toward the church. It loomed before them, doors closed and candlelight flickering in the windows.

Kylo drew in the reigns and the horse slowed to a stop, tossing its head defiantly.

“Are we going in after him?” she asked, nearly twisting around to ask before she remembered that she would not be able to see his face and she did not want him to see hers.

“We are,” he confirmed as he dismounted. “You will stay hidden, do you understand?”

“ _I_ summoned _you_ ,” she reminded him in a furious whisper, straightening her skirts in a huff after he set her back on her feet. “You answer to me.”

“I answer to no one,” he said stubbornly. “You summoned me to see to it that you would be safe and your enemies punished, which I will do- but by my own choice.”

“Why?” she asked, refusing to step back as he stepped closer, his body brushing against hers as she stared resolutely at his chest. The buttons of his jacket strained with each breath he took.

“You did not deserve what they did to you,” he said simply.

She didn’t resist when he took her hand again, even when he strode boldly and without caution to the front door of the church and kicked it open unceremoniously.

“Get inside and hide,” he told her, and her eyes widened as he let go of her hand to pull a sword from the sheath at his hip. The blade gleamed red in the dim candlelight from blood already spilled.

“What is this? Who dares to enter my church?”

Snoke’s voice, nauseating in its cruelty, echoed through the building and Rey did as the Kylo had instructed, crouching behind a pew to stay out of sight. A quick peek over the worn wood was enough for her to see Snoke standing near the front of the church in a long brown nightdress, lantern held high to drive away the darkness and whatever threat might lie within.

Kylo strode confidently up the center aisle toward him, sword in hand and no trace of hesitation in his step, and Rey knew the moment Snoke spotted him because the man let out a gasp of confusion and terror that echoed in the building.

She peeked her head up again, certain that Snoke wouldn’t take his eyes of the spectral menace that haunted him long enough to spot her.

“What are you?” he demanded, swinging the lantern wildly as he stumbled back.

Kylo didn’t answer and he was near enough that panic overtook Snoke. He hurled the lantern, the glass exploding in a burst of flame at Kylo’s feet. Using the momentary distraction, he ran, ducking beneath the killing swipe of Kylo’s blade as he bolted for the door.

Rey weighed the instruction that she had been given against the chance of Snoke escaping and stepped out from behind the pew to block his path. He skidded to an uncertain halt as the flames began to lick their way over the walls, unable to see her face in the heavy shadows.

“Leaving so soon?” she asked quietly, and his eyes widened in shock as he recognized her voice.

“Witch,” he accused, his face contorting around the word until his features looked less than human. “It is you that has brought this curse down upon me!”

His head hit the ground and rolled toward her feet before she could answer and she watched dispassionately as his body fell, splashing the hem of her gown with blood.

Kylo was behind him, sheathing his sword as he stepped over the body. The church was enveloped in flame as he took her by the elbow and attempted to propel her out the door.

“His head,” she hissed, twisting in his grasp, and setting her feet against his momentum. “He doesn’t deserve to keep it, not even in death.”

Kylo sighed, but he allowed her to scramble back and retrieve the head, saying nothing else to her as she stepped through the doors with it clutched in her hand.

A dozen villagers stood open mouthed in the church yard, drawn by the sound of screaming and the flames now dancing up the spire. They recoiled in terror as they spotted them- a headless phantom and a wisp of a woman with a head cradled in her arms. Her step faltered but Kylo bent swiftly and hooked an arm behind her knees and lifted her into his arms. The crowd staggered back, screams and whispers following them as he moved with quiet authority to the horse that still waited for him.

“You did not listen,” he snarled as he tossed her up into the saddle and vaulted up behind her. “You could have been killed.”

“He was getting away,” she said petulantly, gripping his arms as they thundered down the rode and back out of the village. No one moved to stop them, and she ignored the villagers as they scrambled out of the way of the horse’s flashing hooves. They were insignificant to her now.

“He was not getting away,” Kylo told her. “There is no getting away from me. Nothing on this earth would keep me from taking his head once my mind is set on it.”

“I am not helpless,” she bit out furiously, though how she might have defended herself if Kylo had not arrived in time to protect her, she did not know. “Besides,” she said quickly, “you killed him, and I am fine.”

He grunted, and she felt a flash of triumph that he could not find fault with her conclusion before he added, “A century of death and still I am stuck with stubborn women.”

“A small miracle that you had the attention of any women a century ago,” she muttered, irritated by the exasperation in his tone, but her back was pressed hard against his chest as they rode back into the woods and the warmth of him and the ripple of his muscles beneath her hands brought a flush to her cheeks.

It was easier for her to forget when she could not see him that she spoke not to a man but to a headless specter whose violent end had left him a cursed figure doomed to roam eternity without a face.

She was reminded abruptly when he swung down from the saddle and held his arms up to help her down- his bloodied neck open and gaping from her position in the saddle. Somehow fresh blood wept from the wound each time he moved.

“Does it hurt?” she asked him, reaching her hand up tentatively to lay against his chest.

“Yes,” he said, peering into the shadows beneath her hood that kept her own face a secret. “Does that bother you, witch?”

“It does,” she told him softly. “I do not wish pain upon you, even if you are most stubborn. You have helped me.”

“Are you not frightened of me?”

She flicked a glance down at the body of the walking corpse as it spoke, its front now splattered with blood and dirtied with mud the hooves of his horse. Just beyond him, the heads of her tormentors stared unblinking at the sky.

“No,” she said flatly. “I had more reason to fear them than I have to fear you.”

Her fingers twisted in the front of his jacket, red against the pale skin of her hand. She had feared touch for many years, but she found herself oddly less repulsed by the body before her than she had been by the presence of any of those in the village. His gruesome appearance was less appalling than their hatred.

“I’m not frightened,” she repeated and he must have heard something in her tone, the need that she had repressed since the day her parents had abandoned her perhaps, because he stepped back from her until she was forced to pull her hand away.

Loss settled into her bones as he reached for Snoke’s head, taking it from where still gripped it forgotten in her other hand, and tossed it onto the pile.

“It is nearly dawn,” he told her, shifting to stare at the barely brightening sky. “We will have to wait for the next night before we take more lives. Will you go home?”

“I cannot,” she told him with a shrug. “By now my grandfather knows I have taken the book.”

“Will he not come for you here? I cannot protect you in the daylight.” His voice was gruff with concern, and it curled around her, a gentle stroke of soft emotion that she was unfamiliar with.

“There were other spells,” she assured him. “I cast one the first time you left me. He cannot find this place now.”

He grunted an acknowledgment, causing her to wonder briefly if he missed having the ability to nod his head, and shifted restlessly as the silence grew between them.

“Where do you go, when you leave here?” she asked eventually, more to delay his leaving than from a sense of true curiosity.

“Ah…” He tapped his hand against his leg, drawing her gaze to the thickness of his fingers, the corded muscle of his thigh. “It’s hard to explain. The afterlife, I guess.”

“Heaven? Hell?”

“Not exactly,” he hedged. “I’ve been forgotten, so it’s just...just eternity. Alone.”

“I’m sorry,” she told him honestly, wishing now that she hadn’t brought it up. “I have always been alone.”

“You are not alone now.”

The words sent a cascade of warmth through her, a balm on the edge of her own pain and she gathered her courage, offering him the same in return. “Neither are you.”

He tensed, and she turned away, overcome with regret at his rejection. The woods around them stilled, the world waiting with silent anticipation. She could sense him behind her, almost feel the weight of whatever conflict raged within him.

She knew he was coming closer by the sound of his footsteps, boots heavy on the wet ground, but she didn’t step away and he closed the space between them until she could feel the heat of his chest against her back.

“Will you still not show me your face, little one, or am I only to get the intimacy of seeing the blood on your hands and nothing else?”

“You have seen me well enough,” she said, the denial hanging between them as he brought one hand up to rest on her stomach, taking up all the width from the hip bone to the underside of her breast. He tightened his grip, urging her to move until she was pressed with her back against his chest. His fingers traced a startlingly intimate line up her neck and across her jaw.

“What are you doing?” she asked softly, but her knees were already trembling, and heat flooded into her, heavy and expectant, at the apex of her thighs. She was no stranger to the concept of sex, had seen the diagrams of anatomy and reproduction in the library, had attended to the births of countless children, and she knew what it meant when a man put his hands on a woman so intimately.

She had never dared to think anyone would want to put their hands on her.

He waited, not moving, for her to move or to pull away, to speak a word that would stop him or deny him, but instead her panting breaths were the only answer until he began to move again, gathering her skirts slowly in his fingers until the hem crept up out of the mud and over her calves, her knees, her thighs- baring her skin to his invisible gaze and the curling tendrils of mist that reached out to caress her.

He shifted the fabric of her dress into the hand that rested on her stomach, moving it out of his way with slow deliberation, and trailed a slow finger from her knee to the rounded curve of her behind.

She shuddered at the contact, the unfamiliarity of being touched, and his arm tightened around her. She couldn’t see him, not the hard body with its temptingly hard planes or the terrifying emptiness where his face should have been, but it didn’t matter. She could feel him, the touch that was both human and alarmingly unnatural, and she ached for something no one else had ever been willing to give.

“You’re not going to stop me, are you? You’re just going to stand there trembling and let me take you over a bloody altar and a pile of severed heads.”

“Yes,” she breathed, ashamed but unwilling to change her mind. “If you’ll recall, I never liked the owners of those heads, anyway.”

He chuckled, dark and greedy, and slid his hand up to cup her breast. She arched into the touch, needy and demanding as he kneaded the flesh. “You are fearless,” he murmured. “Will you turn around so I…”

“No,” she said quickly, shutting down the request to see her face before he could ask again. If he pulled away from her now… “You don’t need to see me.”

She leaned forward, bracing both hands against the altar stone in front of her and pressing her backside firmly against him until he moaned and gripped her hips, thoroughly distracted by what she _was_ willing to give.

Heat flooded unseen into her cheeks as he tugged her undergarments down and out of the way, urging her to kick them off as he pressed a thick finger into her folds. “You’re so hot here, so ready. It’s been a century since I did this. I never thought I would do it again.”

“I never thought I would get the chance at all,” she admitted with a bitter laugh. “It only took a blood and black magic, so we will have to make it memorable.”

“I am _certain_ we can accomplish that,” he rumbled, and she sighed, opening shamelessly for his hand as he slid his fingers against her with a decedent slide and dipped inside.

It was a strange sensation, but not an unpleasant one, to feel him there and she shifted easily when he wedged a knee between her own, spreading her thighs to allow him deeper access. She shivered as he stroked her, pleasure beginning to follow the movement of his fingers as they curled against her.

He held her in place with one hand on her hip and the other inside her until her cries echoed in the clearing and her breath sobbed in her chest. Her fingers dug into the moss-covered stone, dirt grinding in beneath her nails with the dried blood and she closed her eyes against the evidence of her debauchery, ignoring the last part of her that wondered how she had become a witch and a murderess and a whore to some avenging spirit.

He fumbled with his clothing behind her and then he was pressing into her again- much heavier and fuller this time, opening her to take him in as she panted against the unexpected stretch. He was gentle- softer and kinder than she had anticipated- and she rocked back against him to take him deeper until he was seated fully inside her, his thighs pressed firmly against the back of her own.

He curved his body over her, the heat of him warming her in a cocoon of safety even as the blood from his wounds dripped on her cloak and gathered in rivulets to run onto the rock beside her hands. The near dawn light shone on the splashes of crimson as he began to move, each roll of his hips a miracle and a reminder of how far she had fallen.

Perhaps the villagers had been right to hate her, maybe she was everything that her grandfather had urged her to be, after all. What would they think of her now, if they could see what she was allowing this monster to do to her because he had offered her a kind word, a kind touch?

He whispered words of praise into her ear that drove the doubt from her mind as each thrust sent a little jolting shock of pleasure through her and she stretched up onto her toes, desperate to take more of him as he whipped his hips against her.

The gentle tenderness that she had needed melted away until that was left was a mutual savage claiming, each of them understanding the need that they were filling for the other as a bruising ecstasy pierced into her.

They were bound, blood and passion a shared thread that snaked its way through her, a dark magic that she did not fully explain but could not deny. He belonged to her- _she had summoned him_ \- but she belonged to him now, as well. They both felt it.

The hood of her cloak slipped down, and he tangled his fingers in her hair, gathering it possessively in his fingers and tugging until her scalp burned and a small cry slipped from her lips. He was vicious with her now and she let his need fill her until she shattered around him, her body clenching with each wave of thrilling delirium that he had provided.

He followed her into oblivion with a hoarse shout, cradling her tenderly in his arms.

She stayed motionless, riding waves of contentment until he finally let her go and then she turned to him without thinking, seeking connection and being met with the shocking evidence of exactly what she had done as his blood dripped lewdly over her chest.

He made a noise, an inhuman cry of shock and grief that echoed her own and she remembered too late that her hood had come down. The gray skies hid nothing of the damage that had been done to her face and she tipped her head up in challenge as her skirts dropped to cover her legs from his view.

“Are you satisfied?” she asked bitterly, certain now that he would leave her, repulsed by what had been done to her.

He reached a hand up, cupping her cheek tenderly as she flinched.

“Rachel?”


	3. His in Life , Hers in Death

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please remember this is supposed to be a creepy Halloween fic. There is lots of death and violence, sadness and tragedy. It's the spirit of the holiday! I have updated the tags because of the way this chapter developed and there is now a specific tag for suicide. 
> 
> Have fun and enjoy the twisted tale!

“I’m Rey,” she reminded him, stepping back until his hand fell away from the curve of her cheek, “just Rey.”

“You don’t remember me,” his voice was strangely broken, defeated. It cracked at the end of the last word, pain bleeding out to leave her baffled and confused.

“How could I?” she asked, turning her hands over, palms up in the kind of shrug meant to proof you weren’t up to any tricks, though she didn’t know what he could possibly believe she was hiding. He had been dead nearly a hundred years- how could she have known him?

He sank to his knees in front of her with a choked sob, reaching for the hem of her skirt and wrapping the blood-stained fabric around his fingers. She could hear his soft weeping and the muffled sound of indistinguishable words.

“I don’t understand,” she explained softly, unsure of what she had done to hurt him and wishing desperately that she could undo it. She leaned closer, trying as best as she could to over comfort, and the words mingled with his soft sounds of grief suddenly became clear.

“I’m Ben,” he was whispering. “Please let her remember that I’m Ben.”

Ben.

A primal feeling surged inside her- a familiarity that she didn’t understand, a connection to something long lost and forgotten.

“Ben?” Her voice was tremulous, quivering and confused, but he jerked as though she had struck him, his body curving in over itself as he cried out in pain. She stumbled back, nearly falling as she tripped over Snoke’s head, his eyes wide and staring as only Kylo’s grip on her skirts kept her from tumbling back.

“I’m sorry,” she babbled helplessly. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’m sorry, so sorry.”

When she looked down at him again, she found herself staring into the eyes of a man, whole and unsullied by death.

He was pale and had proud face with a long nose and high cheekbones. Black hair fell well past his shoulders and was held behind his head with a slender ribbon, a style that would have been fashionable a century ago.

She knew this man, recognized him instinctively and with her whole heart, and a love that was unable to be severed even by death pounded in her chest as she ached for him.

Memories of a life that was somehow both hers and another’s tumbled through her mind in a jumbled haze- images and sensations weaving together a history that used to belong to her.

_She was young and unscarred, smiling at a boy with ink black hair as he tugged the end of her braid. He was big already, and she knew the other girls were mostly scared of him, but his eyes were soft and kind and his smile brightest just for her. She thought this might be what love felt like. His lips brushed her cheek, and he whispered a name that had once belonged to her._

_His kisses were soft and his body hard against her own when they snuck away to the barn together and she felt no shame when she let him slide over her, whispered words of love on his lips and bits of straw in his hair. He was hers, and nothing would ever take him from her. Surely God would not judge her the way she knew Ben’s uncle would._

_Then he was shouting, storming out of the church where his uncle preached on Sundays, his hands fisted by his side. She ran after him, and he pulled her into his arms, his grip tight as she tried to soothe him. Another man ripped her away from him, and she heard herself begging. “Please, father,” again and again as Ben swung up into the saddle and rode away. The red coat her wore broke her heart, but not as much as his absence._

_She was curled up in front of a fireplace, her feet cold and her hands gripping a letter that made her afraid for both him and the village. Her loyalties were divided but her heart was always Ben’s. She wanted to burn it, to make sure his secrets stayed safe, but she couldn’t let go of the only thing she had that reminded her of him…Instead she tucked in a drawer, safe beneath the layers of undergarments and petticoats._

_The sound of gun and canon fire echoed through the bitter winter air, louder than the screams of the dying. She pushed the horse she rode to dangerous speeds, his hoofbeats a staccato punctuation to her own racing heart. Her father had found the letter and run straight to Luke with the information that Ben was with the band of redcoats closing in on the village._

_Luke had gone to face him, to kill him._

_She couldn’t let that happen._

_“Ben!” she screamed, drawing the horse’s reins in too sharply, hanging on as the horse kicked up angrily beneath her and looking on in rising horror when she finally spotted them at the edge of the battlefield. She never would have imagined that it could come to this, such bitterness, such hate. The man before her now carried the name Kylo Ren, but he was still hers, always her Ben._

_He glanced at her for only a moment, locking eyes with her across the distance between them, his dark with anger and with regret, but it was enough. Luke’s sword needed no more distraction than that to take what she loved the most._

_She screamed her agony until her throat was bloody, but she could not take back what she had done. When the screams had finally ceased, she had never spoken again, silent as the grave that held her lover, her grief too deep and too mindless to be borne._

_She stepped into the forest before the leaves turned green, carrying a rope and her guilt, a vile thing that bloomed inside her, writhing and twisting with a pain that was beyond her comprehension. The dirt was soft and damp beneath her feet as she stood over the grave where they had buried her lover, her fingers running tenderly over the unadorned square stone._

_If she could not have him in life, then she would have him in death._

_There was only relief when she placed the noose around her neck, the rough rope scratching at the tender skin of her neck. Her stomach lilted inside her when her feet met nothing but air._

Rey’s eyes widened as a quick jerk brought Rachel’s memories to a sudden end and she found Ben still kneeling at her feet, his face anguished and hopeful.

“Ben,” she sobbed, throwing her arms around him, and tumbling him backward onto the damp earth. “I remember you,” she told him again and again, raining desperate kisses over his face as he laughed.

“I remember you,” she breathed against his mouth, filled with a sudden, overwhelming rush of love. She felt as though a missing piece of her been restored.

“And because you knew me for who I truly was, I have my head,” he said, rubbing his nose gratefully against her cheek.

“I cost you your head,” she wailed, but he kissed her hard, gripping her chin in his hand so she couldn’t turn away as tears began to stream down her cheeks.

“Luke is to blame my head, the bastard. Not that it was just him.”

“Who else?” she asked, hands tightening protectively in his hair, like she might be able to hold his head on this time.

“Palpatine,” he said simply, and she remembered now, a familiar face in the background of her memories, a man that had loomed over her all of her current life.

“How?”

“Black magic to keep himself alive. He was the one that convinced me to fight for the King, and then convinced Luke to kill me for it. He wanted power in the village and Luke was in his way. He refused to serve Palpatine as his father had done, though I did understand all of this until I lost my life and you.”

“Your family,” she said softly, remembering the legend of the horseman and all that he had done.

“I killed Han,” he admitted, “when Palpatine first brought me back and he went to his death willingly, torn apart by guilt.”

She frowned, fragments of memory stitching themselves together in her consciousness. “And Luke? Your mother?”

“I would have killed Luke, and he would have deserved it, but his horse threw him when he was fleeing. Broke his neck, fittingly enough. I did not kill Leia. She left the village after Luke’s death, and I watched her go- she had lost everything already.”

“They never spoke your name again,” she said sadly, tucking her head beneath his chin and holding to him tightly, as though she could erase a century of suffering. “Not once after you died.”

“Neither did you, but Palpatine said… he told me you…”

“Yes,” she acknowledged, placing her hand on her neck where she could almost still feel the rope gripping her skin. “And I said nothing at all until I joined you in death. I looked for you there and when I could not find you in the afterlife, I must have come back to get you.”

“Rachel…”

“No,” she said, kissing his nose softly. “I’m still Rey. I have a lifetime of memories now that I did not have before. The girl you remember…she was me, but not entirely.”

He nuzzled into her neck and she giggled.

“Rachel was sweet and so are you, but you are also strong and brave and vindictive.” He kissed her again, lips lingering. “I like it.”

He sighed, his regret clear on is face as the sun finally slipped above the horizon.

“I have to go, stay here until I return.”

“And what then?”

“Then we kill Palpatine.”

***

The moonlight laid an ominous glint on the windows of Palpatine’s manor as the mist crept up from the road. The villagers that had summoned the courage to try and protect him, not doubt lured by the promise of money and power, jumped at their own shadows.

Slipping by them was surprisingly easy, the horse’s hooves sinking deep and silent into the damp earth.

The front door’s hinges creaked, she had warned Ben that they would, and he was prepared to face the small group of her grandfather’s mercenaries that waited just inside.

Ben turned to face them, drawing the sword still red with the dried blood of his previous victims. It quickly became apparent that although she could see his face, the mercenaries could not.

They recoiled in fear but the promises Palpatine had made were tempting and they refused to run.

They were no match for his training and the thread of dark magic that ran through him, heavy in the air. He twisted, blocking thrust after thrust as they closed in around him. Her heart faltered as one stepped up behind him, intent on striking a blow unseen, and Rey pressed a hand to her mouth, stifling the urge to shout a warning.

Ben stepped to the side, allowing the smaller man’s savage swing to carry him over and too far forward. A whistling swipe of his own sword and Ben sends the man’s head rolling across the ground, his face a mask of surprise that satisfies Rey’s need for bloody revenge.

More men join in, each of them swinging the bright edge of a sharpened sword until, at last, someone landed a lucky blow and Ben’s weapon fell from his grip as he stumbled back. Quick as a flash, Rey darted in to retrieve it, tossing it back to him in a high arc that lands it neatly in the palm of his hand.

He made quick work of the rest and pressed a bruising kiss to her lips.

“They can’t kill you, can they?” she asked, seeking reassurance and finding none as he turned away.

“I am already dead, but I don’t trust Palpatine. I don’t know what might happen here, where his power is strongest.”

She followed behind him, her hand gripped tightly in his and a new fear in her heart.

They find Palpatine in the library, his eyes milky and swarming with sick, dark magic. Once she might have been frightened of him, but now she has dark magic of her own.

And she has Ben.

“Grandfather,” she says, a lifetime of hatred spilling from her mouth like bubbling black bile.

He laughs, the sound clawing at her ears and her instincts in a painful tug.

“You are _not_ my granddaughter,” he cackled, his words unfathomable. “I knew you as soon as I saw you. Sweet Rachel, so soft and so in love. I wanted to use you to control Kylo Ren, but you refused to learn the necessary magic. Stupid, useless child. I knew Snoke could drive you to it.”

Her eyes were wide, searching Ben’s face and Palpatine’s as though the truth might be written upon the skin. Ben’s face revealed only confusion and Palpatine’s cruel certainty.

“But my parents…”

“I bought you from your parents- they were nothing, in this life and the last.”

Fury slid through her with the truth, cutting into her like a knife as she bled pain and memory for the second time since this day began. Too many times this man had ruined everything- for her and for Ben.

He needed to suffer and the power that he had tried so hard to teach her flickered to hateful life in her fingertips.

He had his own magic, and it reached for them in crackling, spitting blue- sending a jolt of pain through her that dropped her painfully to her knees, Ben beside her. She could feel what he was doing, his attempt to draw their power from them, and she dipped her head, so he wouldn’t see her smile.

He believed that his power was unbeatable, but she knew what he did not. She had memories of the magic that she had used to summon Ben to her and the bond that was forged between them when two lonely people had each found solace in the bodies of the other.

Two were now one, and Palpatine would not stand against them.

Ben stumbled to his feet first, leaving Palpatine wide eyed with surprise before he sneered. “It is time that I dispose permanently of the last Skywalker.”

Sith words roll off his tongue- words of banishment, of death, of separation. They words coil putrid in the air, but nothing happens. Ben remains by her side, strong and whole.

Rey moved quickly, jumping to her feet and sinking the tip of the dagger she had strapped to her thigh deep into Palpatine’s side before he understood what was happening.

“I summoned him,” Rey reminded him quietly, her voice soft and deadly in his ear. “You cannot banish that which is bound to me.”

She stepped back to reveal Ben behind her, poised to strike the final blow. Palpatine tipped his face to look at her, his milky eyes already dimming, as she smiled wickedly.

Ben’s red blade was sharp and quick as it sliced through the air, and Palpatine’s head rolled across the ground to Rey’s feet.


	4. Bite of Blade, Echoes of Eternity

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note the updated tags! This story went in a whole different and much darker direction than I had originally anticipated and the new tags are important for this chapter! The smut and the ending are darker than most things I have written before and the major character death tag will be in full effect. It's a horror story, so the typical happy ending doesn't really apply here, though I tried my best give them the love they deserve in that context and will never separate them. 
> 
> I have to give many, many thanks to aurorareylo for being such an amazing and supportive beta on this story and to the whole Reylo Creatives Discord group (which can be found @CreativesReylo on Twitter) for helping me brainstorm this and make it so much more interesting!

They left the mansion brimming with dark magic, the villagers fleeing in terror as they emerged. Rey held Palpatine’s head in her hands and this time she wore no hood to disguise her face.

She was longer afraid of the villagers or their judgments.

They rode back into the woods quickly, Rey gripping the head in one hand and holding on tightly to Ben with the other. He didn't speak until they had reached their small clearing and he had set her back on her feet in front of him, his hands still holding tight to her waist. 

“They know what you’ve done,” he told her quietly, his lips pressing softly at the skin of her temple. “What will you do now?”

“I can’t return to the village, would not desire to even if I could,” she said. “I never belonged there.” 

“You belong with me,” he said desperately, and she could see the fear clouding his eyes, the knowledge that death still separated them. He would leave again with the dawn and she would remain here, tethered painfully to the world of the living. “I wish I could take you away from this place.”

“You can,” she breathed, dark certainty winding around each word. “You know what you have to do.”

He brushed a lock of hair behind her ear, his fingers trembling. “I don’t know if I have the strength to do it.”

“I never want to lose you again,” she said, pulling him for a firm and desperate kiss. “Not ever.”

“You weren’t with me before,” reminded her, echoes of their glimpses of eternity and the aching loneliness they had experienced settling over them.

“Last time we didn’t have the book,” she said, sitting down beside the altar and thumbing through the pages as he watched her curiously. “I remember seeing it in here before.”

“Seeing what?”

“A spell to bind our souls,” she said, smiling as she reached the right page.

He looked skeptical, his brow crinkling with doubt. “Why didn’t Palptine use it to control me, then? That would have been enough to keep me in his thrall permanently.”

Rey turned the book around, showing him the illustration and smirking as his eyes went wide. “I don’t think he wanted to know you so intimately, and besides, it only works for people in love.”

“Do you still love me?” He wasn't looking at her now, his gaze fixed resolutely on the book as he pretended to read the spell's instructions again.

She smacked his arm.

“Of course, I do. Nothing so small as death would change that.” She eyed him with mock skepticism, “Do you love me?”

“With every beat of my heart since the first day I met you,” he said seriously. “I will do whatever it takes not to lose you again.” He looked back down at the book and then up at her with a wink, “Not that this will be any great hardship.”

“I believe you might even enjoy it,” she said, looking at the picture again herself. “Well, most of it.”

“Are you nervous?”

She held up her arm, the red line of sliced skin still clearly evident. “I have bled for you before.”

He pulled her close, tugging her up on her toes so he could press a soft kiss to the skin beside her elbow, just beside the place where the cut began. “I will try my best to make it up to you,” he promised huskily.

His eyes were dark and needy, sending shivers down her spine and heat straight to her core.

“We just…we just need to set the circle up,” she said, licking her lip and watching as his eyes darted to follow the movement of her tongue. “And then... then we can begin.”

He nodded, releasing her hand and letting his fingertips skim down the sensitive skin on the inside of her arm before encircling her wrist. “Show me what to do.”

It went faster this time, with his help. The candles blazed twice as high with the combined strength of their magic, and Rey felt a small thrill roll through her when the circle was cast. Dark energy pulsed in the air between them, greedy and demanding.

It wanted blood, and she was willing to provide that. It wanted much more than just blood, and she was willing to provide that, as well. Just the thought of it sent a wave of need straight through her, followed by a creeping tide of shame. She had let Ben have her body in two separate lifetimes, but he’d never done anything to her like this.

His fingers grazed over her skin as he peeled the dress down her shoulders, careful and tender as he was in her memories. She trembled when the tip of his nose brushed her cheek and again when the faintest brush of his breath caressed her neck.

She knew what was coming, and the softness he gave her now only heightened the anticipation and the fear.

He left the dress in a pile by her feet, skimming her underskirts down over her hips until she was bare before him in the cold night air except for a thin chemise and stockings. She ought to have been freezing, but the desperate heat in his eyes warmed her blood and flushed her skin with need.

He, too, knew what was coming.

Her nipples were already pebbled when he bent to take them in his mouth, first one and then the other, lavishing them with attention that had the thin cotton that covered them clinging wetly and showing off the pink beneath.

“So pretty,” he murmured. “You were always so much prettier than I deserved.”

She laughed and thrust her fingers into his hair, tipping his face up until he was forced to look her in the eyes. “The village took care of that,” she said, tapping the side of her face, fingers brushing the long pink line of her scar.

He scowled, tracing the path of it up face with his fingertip. “Nothing they did to you would ever make you less than perfect to me. Do you understand? Nothing.”

She hummed happily as he pulled her up onto her toes, plundering her mouth with a new sense of purpose. She could taste the layers of his emotions- the love, the determination to prove to her that she was beautiful, the sadness at the time they had lost and the pains they had endured.

She took it all and gave it back to him, holding nothing back as she twined around him, barely conscious of the world that existed beyond his lips and trying hard to cling to her last vague awareness that they had a task to complete.

One that they had barely begun.

He turned his face away and she whined a needy protest until he sank his teeth into her shoulder, hands tangling in the thin straps of her chemise and tugging until it tore down the center. She shoved at the jacket he wore, pushing it off his shoulders and then tugging shameless at the shirt beneath until he lifted his arms and let her drag it over his head.

He had new scars now that she did not remember, echoes of battles long forgotten etched into the pale expanse of his chest and the flat planes of his stomach. There was one on his shoulder that she thought looked like a bullet wound. She traced them each with her fingers, with her lips.

He would have more before this night was done, given by her own hand.

She watched with hungry eyes as he kicked off his boots and undid his trousers, pushing them down his legs until all that concealed him from her gaze was a pair of simple linen drawers.

Hesitation played out plainly across his face as he looked at her, then back at the pages of the book. “Are you certain this is what you want? Bound to me for an eternity?”

She tipped up her chin, defiant.

He had his answer and stepped closer, his mouth suddenly a hairsbreadth from her own as his fingers skimmed the inside of her thigh. The blade of the knife she still had strapped there was cold as he unsheathed it.

She watched him with heavy lidded eyes as he laid the tip of the knife to her breast, caught somewhere between passion and panic. The first bite of the blade made her gasp and they both watched as blood welled up from the small cut he had made to run down and drip onto her toes.

He flicked a hand over the wound, gathering some of the wetness on the tip of his finger, and slipped it between his lips. She watched as his tongue swept across it to taste, her lips parted in surprise.

When he went back for more and dipped his finger into her mouth, she wrapped her tongue around it eagerly. The metallic taste flooded her mouth, heavy with the potential for dark power.

After that, each cut brought a taste as a reward, a reminder of what they were doing and why.

He murmured the Sith incantations as he carved his way over her breasts and across her stomach, wept with her at the symbols that took shape down her spine. The ones on her arms and legs were easier, smaller but he kissed them as he finished them, his lips red and bloodstained.

The practice of dark magic always had a cost, and the cost was pain. She thought she understood what kind of price they would pay for the bonding of two souls by the time he was done- she was trembling with pain and her face was wet with tears.

Then he placed the knife in her hand, his own skin waiting, and she learned what true pain felt like.

She flinched with every drop of his blood that she spilled, she sobbed through the incantations and her tears mixed with the crimson that ran down his chest. He was stoic as she carved the words over his spine, the air silent except for her whispered, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” He kissed her hard before she started on his arms and legs, promising her that there was nothing he would not endure for an eternity at her side.

When she was done, the knife clattered onto the altar stone, bloodied from the tip to the hilt.

He held out his arms and she stepped into his embrace, sniffling as she pressed a cheek to the crimson wet of his chest.

The dark side always demanded pain, but that that part was over, and it demanded something else, something that was much easier to give.

It didn’t take long for the soothing strokes of his hands to become possessive. Sith power drifted into their bodies through the air from the words they had spoken, into their skin through the words and symbols they had etched into tender flesh, pushing them forward into the next step. His fingers clung to the curves of her body, digging into the soft places as he clutched her to him, and she knew she would wear the bruises of his hands as she wore the marks of the blade.

She arched into him, writhing as she attempted to get closer, all of her needs reduced to the desire to feel his body against hers, his mouth moving over her. He tangled his fingers in her hair, snaring her and twisting her head to the side to reveal the vulnerable expanse of her throat. She shivered when he nibbled his way from her jaw to the racing pulse point in her neck, pressing a kiss to the racing evidence that she was alive and vital in his arms.

“Ben,” she gasped, and he lifted her off her feet, pulling her up until she could wrap her legs around his waist, and she leaned into his kiss, hands gripping his shoulders for balance as he slipped his tongue past her teeth, letting her taste her blood on his mouth until she was dizzy on the need for sex and the presence of power.

She tipped her back to laugh, to glory in the triumph of the moment, and spotted movement over his shoulder. One of the men from the village, brave or foolish enough to follow them, had somehow stumbled too close to the circle they had cast and was watching them from the woods just beyond the clearing.

She knew she was the only one that could see Ben as he had been in life. She had seen the mercenaries in Palpatine’s manor react to their perception of him as a headless monster, so she knew what this man was seeing- her gripped in the arms of a headless corpse, naked and covered in blood as she laughed at the sky. He looked terrified and frozen to the spot, unable to run or even look away.

She stared deep into his eyes as she dipped her head and licked a path up Ben’s arm, collecting blood from his still weeping wounds, letting it smear across her nose and her chin before showing her crimson drenched tongue to their silent observer and making a great show of swallowing it down. The man bolted through the underbrush back in the direction of the village and she laughed again.

“What is it, my love?” Ben asked, and she smiled at him.

“Nothing,” she said, nipping eagerly at his plush bottom lip. “Make me yours, Ben. Keep me with you forever.”

He closed his eyes, and there were was an unholy glint to them when he opened them- they were alight with need and desire. His teeth scraped over her earlobe and she whimpered, sank deep into the curve of her shoulder and she cried out, looking in thrilled fascination at the bloody indent of his teeth.

Perhaps the dark side demanded more of her blood, after all.

He took her at word, letting go of her with one arm to tug his clothing out of the way and sinking into her with a rough thrust as she urged him on with the encouraging rocking of her hips and whispered words of praise.

He turned blindly and staggered with her in his arms, still rolling her hips to take even more of him in, until he could press her against the rough bark of the nearest tree. She sucked in a breath at the searing pain when the bark scraped against her wounds and he drew back in concern but she pulled him in, digging her fingers into his back, sliding across the blood damp skin to catch in the open lines of his own cuts and nestling inside as he groaned and thrust up into her.

Everything else faded away as she clung to him, legs still wrapped tight around his waist as he plunged into her, taking with a greed and desperation that she would not have thought him capable of before this moment, bruising her thighs with the force of his movements and peeling her back raw on the tree behind her, he finally sank deep and spilled into her, shouting his release into the crook of her neck.

His arms were shaking as he carried her, still shaking with her own need, across the clearing and laid her on the altar stone. He ignored the heads that stumbled off to land at his feet, tucked his softening body back into his underwear and knelt between her knees, nudging them apart with his hands until she was splayed wide- vulnerable and open to his gaze. She could feel the cold air against the warm wetness between her thighs, his spend still leaking out to coat her, and trembled when he ran an experimental finger through her folds before dipping inside to curl against her until her hips arched into his touch.

“Ben,” she whined. “ _ Please _ .”

“Not yet,” he admonished. “The book, remember? For this to work I have to do everything I ever wanted to do to you. Give in to every passion. Well, I wanted to do  _ this _ ,” he said, and he bent his head to run his tongue through the wetness of their combined fluids, sliding through greedily to collect every drop that clung to her, holding her hips down as she shifted and tried to turn away in embarrassment.

“ _ Ben _ ,” she hissed, “you should not do  _ that _ .” But her hands were in his hair, holding him close and fresh arousal was spilling out to coat her thighs. She  _ wanted _ him to, wanted to let him lick and lap and taste every part of her and the mess that they had made together.

“Hmm,” was all he said, sliding another finger deep inside her before pausing with his mouth hovering just over her. “Are you sure you want me to stop?”

_ Give in to your passions _

She shook her head vehemently. “No, _ please _ . Do it again.”

He slid his tongue into her on a sinful slide, nibbled at the skin of her folds, sucked at the little secret bud of pleasure until she wept with pleasure and her thighs shook and the effort she needed to just hold her legs in place nearly became too much. She shifted, setting her heels against the rough stone, and letting her legs open wider, inviting him in and begging him not to stop on harsh, sobbing breaths.

He rolled his fingers inside her- first one, then two, then finally a nearly impossible three with a stretch that she accepted with a soft moan and that had a climax shooting through her so hard that pain and ecstasy wrapped twin fingers of their own around her body and cradled her close until she drifted back to herself to find Ben watching her like she was the most precious thing he had ever seen.

Her eyes drifted down over him taking in every inch of his body until she saw the evident ridge of his own reawakened arousal beneath the thin fabric of his drawers- the white linen was splattered with crimson and clinging to him indecently.

An idea sparked to life in her mind and she blushed, scooting closer to him until she was perched on the edge of the stone, her bare toes digging nervously into the dirt.

_ Everything you ever wanted to do _

Well, maybe she hadn’t  _ always _ wanted to, but she wanted to  _ now _ .

“Stand up,” she urged, kissing him deeply and humming happily at the taste of her tang and his salt on his tongue before nipping at the crimson symbol that she had carved into his thigh and pulling away the blood soaked cloth that kept him shielded from her eyes. She pushed it down over the thick corded muscles of his legs until he could kick it away and then leaned back, admiring the strength of his body and the length of his cock as it rose up proudly to rest tantalizingly against his stomach.

He watched her with wide eyes as she wrapped her hand around him, pulled down the skin to reveal the flushed and swollen head beneath, and pressed a kiss the tip, flicking her tongue across it to gather up the spend that was already seeping out of him in anticipation of what was to come.

“Rey,” he hissed, surprise catching the word in his throat as she wrapped her mouth around him, wetting him with spit and her still bloody hands as she worked over his length, sucking and twisting as he tangled his fingers in her head to hold her there. His hips shifted, restlessly pressing forward to nudge the thick fullness of him against the back of her tongue.

She opened for him, letting him push in a little farther with each rock of his hips until her breath came in shallow gasps and silent tears of effort slid down her cheeks. He brushed them away with his thumbs, his eyes locked on hers she carried him closer to his own release. She could feel it there, in the coiled tension of his muscles, the intense focus of his gaze.

She cried out in loss when he pulled away from her, wrapping himself in his own large hand instead of the warmth of her mouth, but he cupped her cheek in the other hand, bumped his tip against her mouth as the heat of his orgasm spilled across her lips, dripped down her chin to land on her chest. She stretched forward, caught the rest on her tongue, swallowed it down to settle in her stomach on the blood that already waited there.

He pulled her to feet, unsteady as she leaned into him and he rubbed the cooling splash of his orgasm into her chin, into the lines of weeping wounds across her chest, pressing it in as though it could make him further part of her as she stretched up onto her toes, tangling her fingers in his hair and offering him her mouth for his tongue to plunder.

She lost herself in him, lost track of the hours that they spent wrapped in each other and the necessity of the pleasure that they gave and took from each other. They were blind to everything now but need, their own selfishness and the compulsion to belong only to each other at any price the only thing that remained in existence.

He had her on her knees again when the sky began to lighten, her arms gripped at the elbows and drawn back as he plunged into her ruthlessly from behind. Her body shuddered with pleasure even as her heart began to sink with sadness and worry. The graying sky above the treetops signaled the end of the time they had to complete the ritual.

What if all they had done, hadn’t been enough?

They collapsed together, the cold ground suddenly unwelcoming, the sticks and small stones beneath them painful as it pressed ruthlessly on sore and exhausted flesh.

“How do we know if it worked?” he asked quietly, pushing a strand of sweat soaked hair out of her face and looking into her eyes, searching her expression for a sign of her response.

She opened her mouth to explain that she wasn’t certain, that the book didn’t explain the results in great enough detail, but the ugly wounds in her skin began to burn, to sear far deeper into her body than the blade had cut. She arched and writhed as the pain shot straight to her bones, her eyes wide but unseeing as the agony robbed her of all her other senses.

When it passed, she found Ben beside her, breathing heavily and staring down at her in concern. Shadows of his own pain lingered on his face, and his hands were trembling. She sat up, her hands flying quickly over his body, searching for signs that he was injured in some way, but finding only that the injuries that she herself had inflicted were healed, settled deep into the skin in lines of black and red that seemed almost to glow from within him.

A quick glance down at her own naked body confirmed that hers were the same.

“I think it worked,” he said, relief painting his features in the near dawn light.

She nodded and ran a fingertip down the precious length of his nose. “I think so, too. It is time, Ben.”

He swallowed hard but he kissed her and then let her go.

She put her dress on, lingering over the ties and the small buttons and breathing in the pricelessly cold winter air. Everything was suddenly crisper, clearer, dearer to her heart and she wasn’t certain if it was the soul bond that she could feel connecting her to Ben that made it so, or the decision she had made.  She was sure that it had not been this way the first time -she had been lost is a haze of grief and self- loathing, so perhaps it was a combination of the two.

She turned to find Ben already dressed and watching her, his eyes heavy with the weight of responsibility and worry.

“Are you certain?”

“Yes,” she said with a decisive nod. “I have never been more certain of anything in my life…either of them.”

“I love you,” he told her, reaching for her hand. “Always.”

“I love you, too,” she said and took her hand with steady fingers. His lips settled over hers, plush and warm and she gasped when a sudden tug beneath her ribs took her breath away. She glanced down at the spot, numbness spreading through her limbs as he pulled the small blade free, dull red dripping from the edge into the soil.

“Thank you,” she whispered, using the last air that she could pull into her lungs to speak life into her gratitude. She cupped his face in her hand, the last of her strength an expression of love that made him smile wistfully. When her hand fell away, it left behind only the bloody smudges of her fingerprints on his cheek. 

***

Ben exhaled on a shaky breath as she smiled, her eyes locked on his as he bent down to lay her body gently across the altar stone. She was a beautiful offering, a vision of loveliness that the scar that marred her face could not destroy.

He turned to find her spirit watching him, hazel eyes wide and unmarked in death. The fabric of her dress was clean, no longer soaked in mud or splashed with the blood of their victims- the large red stain and the hole just below her breast were gone- she breathed freely and without pain.

“Ben,” she said sweetly, not looking at her physical form as he pressed the eyes closed and placed her hands delicately across her chest. “What do we do now?”

“We go on,” he told her. "Nothing can keep us apart ever again."

She ran into his arms and he kissed her hard, his hands gripping her hips possessively. She would remain as she was now- her body would never change, never wither or twist with age.  She giggled, happy and free, and kissed him again when he tossed her up onto the back of his horse and then swung up behind her. 

The mist closed in behind them as they galloped off into the darkness. 

They were together.

Forever.


End file.
